As I write this, Dave Brockie is tweeting about the Jerry Sandusky trial. “Tons of people are raped,” he says. “The only reason you care is because yet another one of your precious institutions is revealed to be full of shit.”

He’s saying this in character mind you, at least officially, but in the two years since Gwar’s Oderus Urungus joined Twitter, the mask and the mind behind it have become closer than ever. The surprising part is who’s got the bigger personality.

There’s a voice in the background when he first answers the phone. “We’ve got about five minutes,” I can hear it say. Brockie says okay. With the third annual Gwar-B-Q just days away, he’s got a lot on his plate.

“It’s fucking insane. I was thinking of cheesing out on you,” he admits. Apologizing, he takes a deep breath and settles in—twenty minutes later and we’re still talking. More specifically, Brockie’s talking—a lot—about the vacation he’s already planned for May 2013. But he won’t be on the beach or at a resort. Instead he’ll be living out a life long dream.

“I’m all about the Russian front. Next year, I’m going to Russia with a couple of friends of mine and doing a military battlefield tour. I’m going to Volgograd.”

You could say he’s obsessed with tanks, an interest that grew out of his interest in the second World War. “The tank is such an eloquent expression of human evolution,” he says. “But then you think of what it’s for and it’s like, ‘whoa, that’s horrible.'”

It’s an interest he shares with Metal Blade President Mike Faley, a World War II buff and historian with the 100th Bomb Group.

“Mike and I bonded over our lust for war,” says Brockie. “Our hatred of it, but also our morbid curiosity of it; the men and the machines that are involved in the ridiculous conflicts that claim lives.”

When Brockie visits the battlefields of Volgograd next May, he’ll be living out his dream, and after he learns I’ll be speaking with Faley, the man that calls him Mr. Stalingrad, he says to tell him to expect a postcard.

“That rotten bastard!” is the response I got when I did. He was excited when he said it.

“Dave is very much into tanks. He’s into tank battles,” says Faley. “The battle for Hearst, the battle for Stalingrad… that whole thing on the Eastern Front that took place during World War II, that’s a passion for him outside of music.”

“One year I sent him a whole book on tanks that I’d come across, and he was like, ‘where’d you find this?'” continues Faley. “He’s been wanting to do this for years, and he’s going to have a great, great time.”

Writer Nick Leftley profiled Gwar for Maxim in September, and he tells a quick anecdote about the band posing in front of what they thought was a tank in Sayreville, New Jersey [above photo] before stripping out of their heavy costumes.

“For fuck’s sake, guys, it’s not a tank, it’s a goddamn mobile anti-aircraft cannon,” said Brockie, presumably with the same mix of bark and excitement that usually comes from a place of passion. Call it proof, then, that there’s more to the man who made cumming on the crowd famous. That behind the monstrous mask is a man fascinated by terror; perspective, perhaps, on the satire that’s made Gwar an undeniable force in heavy metal.